Prisoners, Property and Prostitutes

by Tom Ratcliffe

  It was also amazing what you could get for twenty quid – it was not unusual to see a broken window reported as minor damage, but when you read further and saw it was a ten foot by twenty foot, half-inch thick plate glass shop window with a value of about nineteen pounds you knew it really meant ‘undetectable’.

  Even if you actually managed to avoid the guardian of the crime book and wrote your own crimes in correctly, on your next visit to the CID admin office you would find that any that could be absorbed into others would just have disappeared as the number of witnesses grew for the first crime in your list.

  It was said that there was so much correcting fluid in the crime book that if you dropped it, it would crack.

  At the other end of the scale, every so often the CID would hit the jackpot, and some low-life would admit to a string of burglaries, thefts and other matters. Then the pendulum swung the other way at a huge rate of knots. Damage offences or old reports of prowlers in the night became attempted burglaries, single recorded offences grew and blossomed to become a veritable bouquet of detections. Most of these would then be asked to be ‘taken into consideration’ by the offender, which meant they were added to his list of convictions but not formally heard in detail at court to avoid too many embarrassing questions about the level of evidence actually available. This was of no consequence however, because it provided a raft of detected offences to boost the figures for the month. If things went spectacularly well, detections would be kept back and ‘fed in’ to a subsequent lean month, or back at the poor end of the scale undetected crimes would ‘disappear’ for a few weeks if the end of the month approached and things were looking bleak, to be added at the start of the following month in the hope of an imminent breakthrough.

  So I was obviously pleased when my Sergeant gave the duties out one Sunday morning and told me to go to the traffic office as I was needed to work as an observer. The traffic office was down a corridor at the rear of the building, and had one desk for their Sergeant and another slightly larger one for the Constables. I sat quietly on a chair near the door and watched them gear up for the day’s work. With no rush hour that day we had time for a ‘brew’ while they caught up on some paperwork. Donald O’Leary, my driver for the day, had to make a phone enquiry to a Police Station in a neighbouring force. He had asked someone to produce their licence and other driving documents and issued what is called an HO/RT 1, which stands for Home Office Road Traffic form 1. (Known less glamorously as a ‘Horti’) The form was issued to a driver as a requirement to produce their driving documents, licence, insurance, and in the case of cars over three years old, an MoT certificate. It was normal practice to ring the station where the driver had elected to produce and see if any offences had come to light, if indeed they had produced at all, or equally if everything was in order as this then saved waiting for any paperwork to come through the post.

  ‘What’s the number for Bronnington Police Station Sarge?’ asked Donald, phone in hand.

  Sgt Hale, the supervisor, paused briefly. ‘It’s Bronnington 4783.’

  ‘Haven’t they got a central number for their Force now?’ asked Donald.

  ‘They may, but ring them direct. It’s quicker,’

  ‘So what’s the code for Bronnington?’

  ‘334,’ I contributed knowledgeably.

  ‘So that’s 0725 then 334 then 4783. Right.’

  Donald dialled the number.

  ‘Hello, PC O’Leary here. Can you check the HO/RT 1 book for me please? …..Sorry, is that not Bronnington Police Station? Oh, beg your pardon. Bye.’

  He turned to Sgt Hale. ‘It isn’t 4783 – that was a private number’

  ‘Oh’ said the Sergeant, ‘it must be 4873.’

  Donald rang the revised number, and had an almost identical conversation with another member of the public, who was not happy to be woken up at 6.20 on a Sunday morning.

  ‘Sorry Donald,’ said his Sergeant. ‘It’s 4387. Definitely.’

  A few moments later a third flustered apology finished Donald’s patience. ‘It is NOT 4387 for God’s sake. What’s going on?’

  ‘Funny,’ said Sgt Hale. ‘It was last time I rang them.’

  ‘When exactly was that?’ said Donald suspiciously.

  ‘It was July. July 1962,’ came the leisurely reply.

  For once Donald was the victim of a practical joke, and he took it in good spirits.

  Over the years he was able to carry out many of his own. The most notorious came several years later – Donald was playing snooker during his break on a night shift when his Inspector, Henry Rowlings, walked in carrying a paper bag. Henry disappeared into the small night kitchen beyond the snooker room and was obviously trying to work the microwave to heat up his food. Henry was a technophobe, and the dials on a modern piece of electronics were beyond him.

  The sounds from within gave an indication of the level of success.

  Ding.

  ‘Bugger.’

  Ding.

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  Ding.

  ‘DONALD! – How do you work this bloody microwave?’

  Donald went to help. ‘What are you cooking Boss?’

  Henry opened the oven door to reveal two small but very traditional-looking pies.

  ‘A couple of growlers,’ he said, using the local colloquialism.

  ‘Pork eh?’ said Donald. ‘Have to be careful it’s cooked properly. Give ’em about fifteen minutes on high I would.’

  Donald gave a little instruction and like a lamb to the slaughter Henry set the dials and then joined Donald back at the snooker table.

  A faint but tantalising aroma of cooking pies floated through as Donald kept a wary eye on the clock.

  Fifteen minutes later they heard a ‘ding’ from the kitchen. Henry got up to go to the microwave as Donald left by the other door, and as he did so he heard a roar of ‘DONALD YOU BASTARD COME BACK HERE’ which was drowned out moments later by the sound of the smoke alarm going off in response to the rancid black cloud which emanated from the oven.

  Donald lay low for the rest of the shift and Henry went hungry, mournfully describing the beloved pies as ‘like two black walnuts’.

  Back out on patrol, an odd feature to be considered at that time was a mileage restriction on the cars. Someone ‘on high’ had looked at the fuel and maintenance bills and decided that to reduce running costs cars were not to exceed a given amount of travelling in each shift. For some unknown reason they had settled on a figure of 24 miles per shift, so at the end of each shift the Station Sergeant would call up on the radio to each driver for their mileage. Anyone who had exceeded that figure would have to submit a written report to explain their excessive distance. Each car also had a log book in which was written the date, officer driving, call sign, and start and finish mileage, and a final column for the total mileage travelled in each shift. Every Sunday the books were examined by another Sergeant to see that the totals given by radio each day matched those in the log books. At least that was the theory. In practice it didn’t really work. To implement such a complex and rigid administration system would cost far more in man-hours than it ever saved in fuel. It ended up that most drivers tried to keep their mileage down, but on a night shift you would often clock up far more than 24 miles by virtue of rushing from job to job, and there was no way you could radio up and say, ‘I’ve done my 24, I’ll come in and put my feet up for the rest of the shift.’

  Various ways around this were found. There were often spare cars in the police station yard, so after 24 miles some drivers would swap cars and start again. Others had the simple yet brilliant idea of ignoring the figures in the ‘start’ and ‘finish’ columns and simply putting 22 or 23 miles as the total. They guessed (correctly) that if any supervisor actually got as far as checking the log book entries, they would never go as far as checking the maths in each individual car. If they did get caught, they could just say that their maths was poor. Other times the previous driver might have done less th
an the maximum distance in a shift, and would write up a total of 24 but actually ‘hand over’ the excess unused miles to the next driver.

  The other method of reducing recorded mileage showed the real stupidity of the system. The cars had mechanical speedometer drives, so if you drove forwards they added miles, and if you drove backwards they removed miles. It was quite common at 4.30 in the morning to see a panda driving round and round a supermarket car park in reverse, but anything more than 5 or 6 miles wound off tended to induce nausea in the occupants, and the incidence of people reporting sick with a bad back after nights increased due to having to look over their shoulder for half an hour continually.

  The other consequence was that the fuel bill rose considerably, using petrol to add the mileage and then more again to remove it. But no one in admin ever worked out that some cars were only doing 17 miles to the gallon, and as long as none of them seemed to exceed 24 miles in a shift they were happy.

  Six

  Shifts with traffic made me keen to join that department one day, but I was under no illusions of it being a quick process. Those who went on traffic tended to stay for years, sometimes decades, and none seemed keen for promotion. To be in traffic with less than seven or eight years’ service was unusual at the time, so I knew I would have to be patient.

  Foot patrol was still my lot, and very pleasant it was on a fine Summer’s day, but in Winter it was a different matter. Rain and wind were no excuse for not ‘checking your property’ as it was called, an obligatory task on nights. This meant going round every shop on your beat, checking the doors and windows were closed and no signs of any break-in were evident. If it turned out there had been any damage or burglary when the proprietor opened up the next day, you had to account for either why you hadn’t noticed it or at least say categorically at what time you last checked it.

  Of course if it snowed, life was a bit easier. Once you had checked a street you only had to see if there were any footprints going towards a door to see if anyone had approached it. No footprints meant all was still well. But much that I like snow, walking round in it for hours became progressively more unpleasant. You could go to one of the hotels in town and scrounge a hot drink – the night porters were a reasonably approachable breed. Like me they were at the bottom of a food chain, carrying responsibilities and only being noticed when they got it wrong. But many were either busy or fairly soon became dull company, so after a swift drink you would head out again into the cold. I had joined at a time when the traditional Police cape was being phased out, and was one of the last to be issued with one. In the coldest weather I generally wore the standard issue greatcoat, a bulky garment apparently made of thick felt, which kept my body warm, but as with the cape it still left my legs cold. One snowy night I watched with envy as one of the traffic cars cruised round the town, the two occupants in shirt sleeves with the heater set somewhere in the ‘sub-tropical’ range. The huge Rover pulled up alongside me, heat surging off the V8 engine and wafting tantalisingly at my freezing frame.

  The driver took pity on me. ‘Get in and have a warm.’

  I didn’t need asking twice.

  I settled into the rear seat, even the upholstery exuding warmth which it had absorbed through a night of closed windows and high heat. It was almost stifling, and I loved it. It wasn’t long before I started to doze, floating away on a blissful wave of luxury.

  After what felt like a few seconds this tranquillity was rudely interrupted by my radio crackling into life.

  ‘Your location for Sergeant York please.’

  Sergeant York was my patrol Sergeant at the time. He took delight in hounding the foot patrols to see they were exactly on their beats. He was generally disliked and left the older in service alone as he knew better than to try pushing them around. This meant that the probationers bore the brunt of his efforts.

  I sat up and looked out of the car window. I knew the town centre quite well by now, but worryingly didn’t recognise a single building.

  ‘Where are we?’ I asked.

  ‘Cuckenfold,’ said the driver.

  Cuckenfold?! I had obviously been more asleep than I realised. We were over five miles out of town, a long way on a snowy night. I needed to be back in town, and fast. Finding an explanation for being a matter of yards off my beat was difficult. To explain being several miles away in an outlying village meant trouble. I could claim I got lost in a blizzard, but I discounted that one straight away. An excuse on the lines of ‘I needed to warm up to avoid dying of exposure’ wouldn’t be good enough either.

  Although it was not strictly their fault I was so far off my patch, the traffic crew did their best for me. The roads had been gritted, but the snowfall was starting to win the battle again, and I admired the true skill with which the heavy car was made to hurtle through the night towards town. Meanwhile I had to buy time to stave off the Sergeant. First I ignored the transmissions until about the third time of calling, then said ‘receiving you, go ahead,’ let them give the entire message and then repeated ‘receiving you, go ahead,’ as if I had heard nothing. Eventually I could stall no longer, and gave my location as New Beam Street, a long road in the town centre. There were numerous alleyways and back yards off it, in which I could maintain I had been unable to get proper radio reception. My stalling worked, and a few minutes later we slewed to a halt in the road and I jumped out. The traffic car shot off up one of the side streets, and moments later the Sergeant’s panda turned the corner into view. By some miracle we had avoided being seen.

  Sergeant York stopped next to me. I tried the passenger door handle and found it locked, and instead of opening it he gesticulated for me to walk round to the driver’s side. He wound the window down a couple of inches, not wanting too much cold to get in.

  ‘Anything going on?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really,’ I replied. ‘Quite quiet tonight.’

  ‘Right. Carry on then,’ he said, and drove off.

  This was nothing more than a spying expedition, seeing if I really was on my beat or not. He didn’t seem to notice that I was dry and relaxed, betraying none of the symptoms of frostbite that he probably expected. Maybe that was why he didn’t offer me a brief respite in his car, but more likely he took his usual satisfaction from being warm while others were not.

  John Morgan met up with me one night when we were both on foot patrol. He was wearing his cape, and with the falling snow he looked quite Dickensian. I was shivering with cold after about two hours of non-stop property checking. John also had a good covering of snow, but looked far warmer than me. The cape covered your arms and body in one, but this difference did not seem enough to justify John’s relative comfort.

  ‘How come you’re not shivering?’ I asked.

  ‘Central heating,’ he said with a comfortable grin.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Central heating,’ he repeated, and opened the front of his cape to reveal a dull yellow glow. He had ‘borrowed’ a paraffin fuelled lamp from beside some roadworks, and was carrying it under his cape.

  This was a brilliant innovation, handed down by word of mouth for decades. Sadly it died out with the advent of battery powered lamps.

  Its only downside was that your uniform tended to smell faintly of diesel, but it was a small price to pay.

  I still had a great deal to learn, but every day brought more work, more experience and slowly, subtly, I was changing.

  Like most people outside the Police world, I had what I thought was a reasonable idea of how life within it would be – everyone focussed on a goal of keeping the lid on the bad guys (and girls of course), with the public supporting us, one big happy family of Police and public, united in the pursuit of good. How wrong I was!

  It wasn’t so much the public that surprised me – a scale from the lowest criminal at one end to the most law abiding and virtuous at the other is easy for anyone to imagine and relate to. What surprised me were the divisions within the Police itself. While we all knew we
were paid to go out and get on with our duties, I never expected to find the empire-building and back-stabbing that went on inside the organisation, often from quite unexpected angles. I wasn’t greatly worried – after all I posed no threat to anyone’s career aspirations, I was pretty much at the bottom of the pile and just starting out. So it came as a shock to be called in to my Inspector’s office after about 18 months’ service and be told ‘I’m putting in a report suggesting we dispense with your services.’

  I agree I wasn’t the most outstanding of officers, but nor was I the worst by a long way. I was honest, punctual and reliable; all things which I thought stood me in good stead. More than that, I had no inkling that this bombshell was coming. I did my best to query the line of thinking behind the Inspector’s move, but the best I got was, ‘Don’t worry – I got rid of seven probationers one year. Anyway, I’ll send my report to the Chief Inspector and see what he says.’

  Was this meant to justify the action or reassure me? Whichever way it didn’t seem to do either, and was not good. The Chief Inspector was a relic from a previous era, utterly out of touch, who regarded all Constables as lowest of the low. He was so old fashioned and out of touch that he had once had a stand-up row with a member of the plain clothes drug squad, ordering the man to get his hair cut because he ‘didn’t even look like a Bobby’. My hopes were low, and my potential situation not helped by being newly married, complete with mortgage, hopes for the future and other expensive commitments. There was a lot at stake. At the 18 month stage I was looking towards the two year service point where I would be what they called ‘confirmed in the rank’, the end of one’s probation and the point where you could be considered fully fledged. Now it looked as if I could be out on my ear.